Full disclosure: I am incapable of being completely, or even mainly, a detached observer or commentator when discussing either Star Wars or Disney, having grown up largely surrounded by both enterprises in equal measure. Anyone who walks into my office sees, hanging over my computer, two posters: a 50th anniversary Fantasia one-sheet, and an Episode I theatrical teaser poster. And chances are if it’s the first time you’ve come to visit me there, I’ll end up telling you why “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and the saga are the largely same cautionary tale about hubris. And scattered around the rest of my office, a plethora of Star Wars toys and Legos, a number of Disney collectibles…you get the picture. And I have on this blog been accused of being a corporate shill, incapable of saying bad things about the media companies that own the copyrights to the raw cultural materials out of which we craft the meanings of our lives.
All that by way of saying that today’s announcement that Disney had purchased Lucasfilm for $4 billion and is planning a new Star Wars film for 2015 (Episode VII, reportedly, and expect massive argument within Geekdom At Large about just what that means right up until opening day, which for the sake of tradition better be late May 2015) produced the following reactions from me in this order:
1) speechlessness.
2) [a few minutes of frenzied Internet fact-checking to make sure that this was not a massive hoax]
3) you know, this could work.
4) OMG a new Star Wars film! In only three short years!!
You’ll hear enough from me about #4 over the next three years, I suspect. But even though John Scalzi basically already said what I think about Disney now owning the Star Wars franchise (and, parenthetically, one of the best special effects shops on the planet in ILM, and probably the best post-production sound recording facility in Skywalker Sound), let me just quickly underscore two points:
1) Disney has thus far managed not to mess up the Marvel franchises it bought, and the Pixar merger didn’t dissolve Pixar’s uniqueness.
2) Star Wars is basically a fairy tale with spaceships and laser guns, and if there’s one thing Disney knows, it’s fairy tales.
So I am cautiously optimistic about this whole thing, and I find other people’s lack of faith in Disney doing right by the saga…well, disturbing. I think Disney knows well enough what it is doing that it’s not going to muck things up, and things can only get better in Star Wars land because the prequels were, hang on, I can say this, not very good. (It takes effort for me to speak ill of any part of the saga.) And Disney has a whole stable of really good directors and writers on speed-dial (and under contract!) who can pull off something amazing. I don’t want to get into the speculation about a director for Episode VII (because I can’t see a way for my ultimate fantasy of a Joss Whedon Star Wars film to come true), but as for writers — Disney could do worse than to hand it to Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, co-creators of the TV series Once Upon A Time (in which they get to muck around with many fairy tales and Disney properties) and co-writers of Disney’s TRON: Legacy.
I suppose my one hesitation involves handing Han, Luke, Leia, etc. to the company that fought to extend corporate intellectual property rights basically indefinitely. But then again, it’s not as though Emperor Lucas was about to let his creations pass over into the public domain. And I think that the slow erosion of proprietary usage rights is basically inevitable, at least for widespread cultural phenomena like Star Wars — Lucas doesn’t get a fee every time someone alludes to The Force or quotes Han Solo. No, no one else can make a Star Wars film or write a novel set in that universe, not for commercial purposes. But Disney is more responsive to public criticism and feedback than Lucas ever was, so I think we’ll see the kind of fan-and-producer dialogue that we saw with Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings. No, not every fan will be completely happy, but at least we’ll have a new film to be unhappy about, and that’s progress.
Worst part of the deal is that no more Star Wars episodes will begin with that iconic 20th Century Fox fanfare.
For the better part of my childhood, I thought the 20th Century Fox fanfare was Star Wars music– only much later in life did I learn that it wasn’t part of John Williams’ soundtrack. The two just go together.
Longer comment was lost — much shorter version: I’ve never associated the 20th Cent Fox fanfare w Star Wars. Don’t think I would have even been able to say whether the fanfare occurred at the beginning of the Stars Wars movies before reading this post and thread.
Honestly, this news moves me almost as much as the polling in the presidential election. I’ve loved the franchise about as long as I can remember, and my first response was exactly the same 4-step you listed.
But I worry about Disney. That’s easily the sort of studio that could continue to kiddify (read: ruin) the series as Lucas has done. Also, the announcements are filled with talk about all the media properties, games, toys, theme-parks, etc. to be exploited. I’m not sure Star Wars could been even more merchandised into mediocrity, but Disney looks ready to try. The last things Star Wars needs is more crappy lunch-boxes and Happy Meal tie-ins.
Sure Disney’s good at fairy tales, but the best parts of the series are the characterizations and their interplay in the OT. The evironment complemented that. But then Lucas let the fairy tale run-away with the prequels cause he couldn’t write human dialogue to save his life. So who the director is for Episode VII is way more important that the studio that runs it. But I am thrilled that Lucas has finally let go. It’s way overdue.
So here’s my advice to Disney to lock in unsure fans: Release the UNALTERED original trilogy on Blu-ray. Just get that done at last – we’ve been waiting so damn long – and you’ll win massive sympathy for the coming trilogy before a frame’s been shot.
A glance at my Facebook feed suggests that PTJ’s reaction is, almost verbatim, that of many other fans in our demographic and consumer niche. Although I’m much less impressed with Disney’s handling of its own franchises (PTJ neglects to mention the straight-to-video hell of the 1990s and 2000s) or of Pixar’s (Cars 2), Marvel has, indeed, flourished in both live-action and animated incarnations. And the fundamental truth is that there are many more people out there who would be an improvement over Lucas on the writing and directing side. As I mentioned in my own feed, there’s something wrong when video games (KOTOR) and cartoons (Clone Wars) have had better plots than the core films.